Cognac

Tinie Tempah was one of the celebrity names at Newbury yesterday, jockeys' temper one of the talking points. An incident in which Timmy Murphy was injured after coming to blows with fellow-rider Dominic Elsworth on Friday is to be investigated by the British Horseracing Horseracing Authority, with a hearing scheduled for Thursday. The men could face charges of bringing the sport into disrepute.

ADRIAN MAGUIRE is poised to clinch a deal to ride for Ferdy Murphy. However, the jockey, in his first full season since splitting with David Nicholson, will retain his freelance status for the 1999/2000 campaign.

RICHARD DUNWOODY will ride Nahthen Lad in Saturday's Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown for the trainer Jenny Pitman who retires at the end of the National Hunt season. Dunwoody has ridden the 10-year-old on three of his five outings this season.

TWO YEARS ago, the chance to see Danoli run at a racecourse in Ireland would put thousands on to the attendance. Back in 1994, he put a hundred times as much into punters' pockets when he won the Sun Alliance Novices' Hurdle. He opened fetes and received bagfuls of fan mail, like Desert Orchid and Red Rum rolled into a single, brave little Irish package, until the leg injury which almost killed him seemed to stop the bandwagon in its tracks.

No sooner had the Government produced its White Paper for the reform of the Upper House than it hit another snag. This time it was a bit of a row over the appointment of Lord Wakeham to head the Royal Commission, or, as the Evening Standard's Patrick Hennessy put it, "to oversee the revamp", which was crisply put. But wasn't there something rather undignified about Mr Hennessy's choice of word for this historic constitutional change?

BOBBY GRANT provided his trainer Chris Grant (no relation) with the biggest success of his training career by taking yesterday's Dipper Novices Chase at Newcastle yesterday. The eight-year-old chestnut, scoring for the first time over fences, overhauled Course Doctor on the run-in to take the Grade Two two-and-a-half mile contest by half a length. The favourite, the ex-New Zealander No Retreat, lost his unbeaten record in Britain in a weary third place.

Anadyr in Russia's frozen far north is the last place on earth that you'd choose to see in the new year. But, by a cruel twist of geography, it'll be the first to greet the new millennium. Wrap up and get down for the coldest party of the year...

THE TOP WEIGHT, Senor El Betrutti will miss the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury on Saturday and will instead run in the Jacky Upton Handicap Chase at the course the previous afternoon. Susan Nock, the grey's trainer, said yesterday: "We worked Senor El Betrutti yesterday and schooled him today. He is in very good form and going like a bomb.''

Tourists are limp, leaderless and distinctly UnAustralian

Andrew Grice: Inside Westminster

Blairites be warned, this could be the moment Labour turns into Syriza

The mystery of Britain's worst naval disaster is finally solved - 271 years later

Exclusive: David Keys reveals the research that finally explains why HMS Victory went down with the loss of 1,100 lives

'I saw people so injured you couldn't tell if they were dead or alive'

Nagasaki survivors on why Japan must not abandon its post-war pacifism

The voter Obama tried hardest to keep onside

Outgoing The Daily Show host, Jon Stewart, became the voice of Democrats who felt the President had failed to deliver on his ‘Yes We Can’ slogan. Tim Walker charts the ups and downs of their 10-year relationship on screen